Following a rough start in January, Connecticut grew jobs for the fourth straight month in May, adding its highest number to date: 5,800 total nonfarm jobs.

The monthly report, released Thursday from the state Department of Labor, showed broad job gains across the economy, with growth in seven out of ten "supersectors." They include professional and business services, trade, transportations and utilities, and manufacturing.

In January, Connecticut lost 10,900 jobs, leading economists to worry about how long it would take the state to recover. Thursday's report suggested that the state's economy had finally clawed its way back.

"Connecticut nonfarm job levels now exceed levels reached before the deep winter freeze set in during January, and are now at a new recovery high," said Andy Condon, director of the Office of Research, in the state Department of Labor's press release.

He added: "At this point, the resiliency of the recovery appears to be bringing people back into the labor force."

The unemployment rate last month remained unchanged at 6.9 percent, a low not seen since January 2009, during the financial crisis, when the rate was 7.0 percent.

The U.S. employment rate also remained flat in May, holding at 6.3 percent.

Don Klepper-Smith, who serves an economic adviser to Farmington Bank, called the May jobs report a "technical bounce" from January's drop, but noted that the jobs number is only up 0.5 percent on a cumulative year-to-date basis.

"The good news is we're growing in the positive direction," he said, before adding, "It's just not as fast as prior economic recoveries."

Connecticut has thus far recovered 71,600 jobs, or 60.1 percent of the total jobs lost during the recession; the state needs to add 47,500 jobs to start a true expansion. The U.S., meanwhile, last month finally saw its total payrolls rise above the level before the recession. But even with that benchmark, experts are still concerned about whether the U.S. is creating enough jobs to entice back those who have dropped out of the workforce.

Here in Connecticut, Thursday's jobs numbers came on the heels of less-than-stellar news about the state's economic health. The U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis last week released a report showing that Connecticut's gross domestic product grew 0.9 percent in 2013, resulting in the state being ranked 39th nationally. Measured against its neighbors, Connecticut fared better than New York (46), but worse compared with Massachusetts (28) and New Jersey (37).

While GDP, which measures the total value of goods and services being produced, is considered a key gauge of the economy along with the number of jobs, Steven Lanza, an economics professor at the University of Connecticut, said that the two measurements do not always move in the same direction and cautioned against reading too much into one number. In general, he added, "Growth is very uneven. It occurs in fits and starts."

Lanza argued that the broader storyline emerging from the recession and recovery has been the outsized hit taken by the financial services industry, a trend playing out in New York as well. Last month, Connecticut's financial activities sector -- which is made up of the finance and insurance sector, and the real estate and rental and leasing sector -- lost 900 jobs.

As of last month, the sector had a total of 130,000 workers, a loss of 14,500, or 10 percent, compared to the employment peak in March 2008.

"We've been hit really hard with recession that's grounded in financial services," Lanza said. "We continue to be held back by that."